Page 17

“Good. How?”

“Scientists altered the DNA of soybean plants to make them more disease resistant, higher yielding and cheaper to produce.”

Wyldan huffs. “A juvenile description, but I’ll allow it. Anyone else?”

Merda sits lower in her chair, her shoulders up around her ears. She’s desperate to stay under the radar today. Like clockwork, the curse strikes. “Merda Ferado, another example, please.” Wyldan leans back on his hands, palms resting on the edge of his desk. His shoulders are rounded, making him look more imposing. His posture need not get involved; the icy stare and accusatory tone do enough damn damage.

“I would have said soy, too,” she says, sucking her lip between her teeth.

“That was already suggested by Mr. Vaskari, prompted by Ms. Aldereyne. Choose something else. Anything else.”

Her cheeks flame, but not before she sends a filthy look in my direction. What? If you were going to say soy, why didn’t you?

“Um…” Merda wrings her hands together, uncomfortable under the intense spotlight.

“Five, four, three, two…”

“Chloroplast disruption in variegated leaves.”

“Thank you,” Wyldan huffs out after a long pause. Poor Merda would be sweating bullets. “And for what purpose?”

Merda blinks at him. Why did scientists prevent normal chloroplast development in white and yellow zones? Because there is a crazy market for rare collectibles. Auction houses cannot keep up with buyer demand for hoyas and monsteras, especially when the tissue cultivation process is slow. Mention the commercial viability. The two-tone leaves offer the plant no benefit; if anything, they can invite pests and disease. Come on, Merda, save yourself.

Wyldan scoffs at the floor. Students in the first row of desks lean backward, anticipating a tornado’s wrath. Instead, he shoves his fists into his pockets and walks around the desk to take a seat. He flicks a button on the projector, and the first assignment beams back at us.

The role of mitochondrial proteins in cellular necrosis. You will work in groups of three to identify proteins and the role they play in energy collapse. That’s fine, I guess. Nothing I haven’t been taught before. If Lukaz is the second part of my group. Who would be the third? I stretch my neck and peer around the laboratory for a familiar face that’s also friendly. There are seventeen of us in this lab. That’s five groups, with two people left over. Why would he suggest groups of three? Then again, seventeen is an awkward number.

“Your groups are on the board,” he says in his trademark weary tone. “Vaskari and Aldereyne, you will work with me.”

Fuck!

The brass plate is satin and pristine. Professor E. Wyldan. Not one fingerprint or smear. I bet it was affixed to his office door with laser precision. The man is infuriatingly cold and impossible to read. When he asked to see me his office, part of me wanted to disappear into the tunnels and race back to my dorm. Only he would know which dorm I live in because this is his university and I accepted a scholarship. The list of rules pertaining to reasons my scholarship could be canceled is almost as long as my wait for him to open the door.

“Enter.”

I brace myself, expecting to be affronted by misogyny and mahogany. I turn the handle, leaning my weight into moving the mammoth door from the frame. Just before it swings halfway, I dip lower toward the nameplate and expel a huff of hot air to fog up the perfect title because I’m petty like that. First, he asked to see me in his office at the end of the day. Second, he made me wait almost a minute before even acknowledging I had knocked, and third, I do not want to be alone with this terrifying, sexy, confusing human.

“Aspen. Do come in,” he says with a curt bark. “Sit down.”

“I’d rather stand,” I snap back, because again the petty flows through me like magma.

My voice sounds paper thin. Any weaker and it would be a thought. Wyldan stands, adjusting his trousers before moving toward his door with practiced fluidity. He snaps the lock with a click.

“Stand, sit. I don’t care,” he breathes, studying me like one of his molecular experiments. My eyes are locked on the threat, so I miss the other door as he approaches it. It lurks like a predator sunning itself on a rock, licking at the air for a scent of something tasty. He snaps the lock on the other door, caging me in with him. My pulse quickens while my brain overthinks the next course of action. There is a window. It’s high, but I could climb the filing cabinet and push the blinds up. I’d probably have to deal with decades of dry rot, that’s if the window opens at all. There has to be an option B. In my planning phase, I zone out to his lips moving. He’s behind me and to my right. If I turn my head, our faces would almost touch. Predacious much?

“Did you hear what I said?”

That would be a hell no. Because I’m planning to get the hell out of dodge, Professor. “No, Professor. Could you repeat that, please?”

I swallow all the trepidation rising like helium in a thick raft. What is so important that he needed to see me after classes in a locked office, no less?

“I said, Welcome to Wyldan U, Aspen.”

“Tha–thank you, sir.”

It’s not until his posture stiffens that I realize he’s displeased. I was polite. Manners and I are firm friends, thanks to my father’s generation and my aunt looking after me when Dad vanished. She was Dad’s older sister, and that generation was nothing if not respectful.

Elijah takes up a similar position to the one he favors in the lab. Leaning back on the desk, his palms flexing on either side of his trim hips. This time when he rounds those sculptured shoulders, they dip toward me.